Strong
by keru.m
Summary: Takes place in season nine, when things were dirty.


Disclaimer: Don't own'em

A/N: This is a response to the challenge on the HBX board. I read the challenge lines. I saw the angst bullet coming full speed ahead. I couldn't help but stand in its path and offer myself up as a willing target. Let's say this happens in horrible season nine, after 'Take it Like a Man' but before 'What If'.

Challenge lines:  
Mac: Are you trying to throw me into his arms, Harm? Is that what you really want?  
Harm: If you love hi, it doesn't really matter what I want  
_Trojan Horse_

--

**Strong**

Mac pulled open the door to McMurphy's, and welcomed the sudden blast of heat that greeted her as she entered. She removed her gloves and her coat, and cursed the cold as she walked to the bar.

"Tonic with a twist." She nodded at the bartender as she took a seat. She let her eyes roam over the bottles of liquor set on the opposite counter as she waited for her order.

Gin ... Whisky ... Rum ... Tequila ... Vodka – once a favourite of hers. She wondered if it still would be. Probably. It would taste like an old friend, comforting and smooth, offering a chance to put her problems aside if only for a little while. Until she actually drank it. Then she'd feel like shit and she'd hate herself for it. Guilt and shame and disappointment and disgust at her weakness.

Aptly reminiscent of how she felt whenever she thought of Harm these days. Or of her relationship with Clay.

Mac shook her head. No. She wasn't going to succumb to temptation, not again. And she sure as hell wasn't going to walk down the tortuous path thoughts of Harm always led her to. They'd screwed up, and that was that. She'd have to find a way to live with herself. With Clay. Maybe without Clay. She could, if she wanted to. She could.

The bartender placed her glass in front of her. She thanked him, and took a sip. It really didn't do anything for her, the tonic with a twist. She would have to start asking herself one of these days why she came to bars to unwind, to de-stress, when she didn't drink, when she fought not to drink.

Maybe it was the silent solitude that sitting here offered. Being sober in a room full of the pleasantly drunk or the completely shitfaced made her feel as alone as she did when she sat by herself in her apartment. But at least here, she was in control while no one else was.

Maybe it was some masochistic need to prove to herself that she was in control. She was still strong. Even if she was sleeping with Clay – had slept with Clay, past tense – had slept with him trying to find in him what she couldn't find in herself.

She took another sip of her tonic with a twist, her impotent drink that gave the illusion of strength.

Mac shifted slightly as someone took the seat beside her, and she hoped whoever it was wasn't one of those social, talkative drinkers. She wasn't in the mood, so she stared at her glass to discourage any attempt at chit chat.

"Jack on the rocks."

She'd recognize that voice anywhere. Typical. Mac closed her eyes in resignation, feeling even more alone than she did when she was home by herself, even weaker than she did when she stared at bottles of 80 proof vodka, wondering if it would still taste the same.

She needed to get out of here. She wanted so badly just to talk to him, to connect. Indecision kept her in her seat.

"Fancy meeting you here," He said, taking a slow sip of his drink. Mac turned to look at Harm, watching as the amber liquid slid over the cool smoothness of the ice cubes, slipped past his lips.

She looked away.

"No date tonight?" He added with that well-worn, tiresome sarcasm of his. "Webb out of town again."

Mac eyed her still full glass of tonic with a twist, and licked her lips wanting what she refused to let herself taste. She really needed to get out of here.

He took her silence to mean something, maybe defeat, maybe a confession, because he continued speaking.

"Or are you meeting him here." He spared the bar a casual glance, taking in the worn tabletops, the scratchy music and the too-loud patrons, his eyes finally coming to rest on her. "I would've thought he was too good for a place like this."

Mac stood up abruptly, and collected her coat. She couldn't speak right now, not with him.

"Leaving already?" He had the audacity to look confused, the gall to look offended.

"I think I should go." She said, more brusquely than she'd intended.

"So eager to get back to Webb, you can't spare time for an old friend."

She looked at him, but she couldn't see him behind his cutting, mean attitude. Did he have to be such a big jerk. Two could play at that game. He wasn't going to run all over her; she wouldn't let him.

"Are you trying to throw me into his arms, Harm?" She stuffed her arms into the sleeves of her jacket, needing to get out of the suddenly too-stuffy bar and his overbearing attitude. "Is that what you really want?"

He turned back to the bar, his dismissal clear. "If you love him, it doesn't really matter what I want."

She could read him well after all these years even under the steely, careless brash he was flinging at her. And after all these years, she still hated what she saw behind his eyes whenever they talked about this ... this thing. This damn thing that had caught her in its merciless snare and ever since refused to let go. This damn thing that he had always refused to give in to, wants aside.

He kept his back to her, and it was so incredibly frustrating, she wanted to break something. If he kept using Clay as an excuse to hide from what he wanted; _then_ it really wouldn't matter. She refused to do anything as long as he did nothing. And if he wanted to be an ass about it ... Tough. Cry me a river. If he couldn't handle insecurity and sucked at being on the wrong end of the stick, then it was his damn problem. She'd been on the wrong end for years – a part of her reminded her she still was – and she'd done it while still being his friend. For years.

"You're right." She opened her purse and pulled out her wallet. She dropped some bills on the table, set to leave. "I wanted you for years, but you didn't want me – love me." It was strangely liberating to say it out loud, to let go of the words and watch them float away into nothingness. "You don't love me, not in that way, so what I've wanted definitely hasn't mattered."

She took the first step in walking away, her turn this time she supposed; such was the unending carnival ride she'd boarded when she first shook his hand in the rose garden. She would free herself from this damn thing. She had to find a way to stop living with a broken heart and hollow wishes.

He grabbed her by the wrist, trapping her in place.

"You can't throw out stuff like that and then walk away from me." He said with deadly quiet. It was a challenge, but she was sick of him challenging her only so he could beat her.

"Just did." She tightened her fingers into a fist. She knew she was being childish. Hell if she cared. He was being childish too.

"Mac..." It was a warning. She suspected he wanted her to meet him halfway, but she'd been trying for ten months and he started just ten seconds ago. She'd bought herself a head start. Hell, she'd crossed the finish line. She was done.

She turned towards him, but couldn't quite look at his face. Instead she stared at her half empty glass of tonic with a twist.

"No, Harm." She sounded dejected when she'd meant to sound determined. "I'm tired. I'm so damn tired of all this. I just can't do it anymore."

"You going to say 'never' again?" There was that snide jerk she'd been avoiding since his return to JAG.

She glared at him.

"No." She ground out. "But I'll try harder to believe it this time." She tried to jerk her arm free, but he held tight.

"I told you once what I wanted most." His words were tiny shards of glass slicing through her skin.

"It was a lie." She said evenly, tried to cap her anger. "You're the one who didn't return my calls."

"You said it would never work out between us." He accused.

"And I was right." She was literally seeing red, and it took all her self-control not to forcibly remove his hand from her wrist. "How could it work if I'm not even worth being your friend unless you get what you want."

"That is not fair." He turned to face her fully.

That's rich. Who the hell was he to lecture her on fairness. She stepped up to him, her breathing suddenly difficult to control, her fists clenched and her jaw taught.

"I'll tell you what's not fair." She jabbed a finger into his chest. "Not fair is hearing second hand that the one person you thought you could depend on regardless was leaving. Not fair is having to live for five months with that same person ignoring you like you're some worthless scrap. Not fair is having that same person hold one word you said after the worst week of your life against your throat like a goddamn knife." She tried to stop, told herself to stop talking but he wasn't saying anything and silence was just cutting deeper.

"You want me to say it's all my fault?" She measured each word with the full weight of the anger and rejection and confusion and hurt she'd felt for the last goddamn ten months. "Fine. It's all my fault. I'm to blame, solely and utterly for everything that has gone wrong in your life and mine and Clay's for the past ten months." She would not cry. "Do you feel better now? Did you win?" She was stronger than this. "Are you on top?"

She ripped her wrist out of his grip and walked out of the bar.

She reached the parking lot, and had to steady herself against her car, taking a moment to breathe, to calm her racing heart.

She was stronger than this.

She didn't hear him come up behind her, but she felt his hand grab her arm and spin her around. And then he was holding her by both wrists, looming above her.

She put on her game face and glared up at him.

He, however, was watching her with a soft concern that, once familiar, was now foreign to her.

"Mac..." It was a plea, an ache.

She couldn't tell who he was trying to comfort, himself or her.

But she didn't need his damn comfort.

She struggled in his grasp. "Let the hell go of me, Rabb."

"No." His hands tightened.

"Let go." She ordered.

"No." His calmly superior tone irritated her.

She directed her fiercest look at him. "What the hell does that mean?"

"I'm not letting you walk away." He was staring at her as though he could see everything that was wrong with her, every little thing. "Not after what you said in there."

"Let go." She demanded, now furious that he would hold her weakness against her. Again. "This isn't going to solve anything."

He loosened his grip at her words, though not enough for an escape.

"No. No it's not." He agreed with her, which threw her for a loop and surprise ebbed just a bit of her immediate anger. "I could have returned your calls. But I was angry. With you, with me, with Webb, with everyone and anyone within shooting range."

His words and his hands and the feel of him standing so close were making her claustrophobic.

She tried to twist her wrists free from his hold. "Stop touching me. Let go."

He did as she asked, and she took three steps away from him. She took a deep breath, and then another, her eyes fixed on the asphalt beneath her feet. Finally, when she thought she had a firm enough grasp of her honesty, she looked up at him.

"I shouldn't have said what I did outside the hotel down ... there. But I was hurt." She bravely continued. "By you."

He said nothing, and she thought she could see hurt in his eyes.

"Fair enough." He finally conceded. She fought back the temptation to just turn around, sit in her car and leave. Regardless of what they'd just admitted, whatever was coming was going to be even harder.

"I'll ask you two questions," He said unexpectedly. "And I'll give you two answers."

"What?" She crossed her arms, confused and unsure if this was just another challenge.

"I can ask you any two questions, and I'll give you two answers."

"You mean I can ask you any two questions?"

"You already asked me two questions. I'll answer them."

She was pretty sure she'd asked more than two. She was equally sure she didn't want to hear the answers to a few among those. "What—"

He cut her off. "One: Are you in..." He paused, cleared his throat, bowed his head, looked away. "Do you love Webb." He took a breath, and his eyes met hers again. He was silent for an excruciating moment as he looked at her. "Two: You said you 'wanted' me for years. Does that still hold?"

No, she didn't want to do this. She couldn't do this.

"We alternate. I answer one, and then you answer one." She bargained almost automatically, her mouth getting ahead of her brain.

"Deal."

She considered him, wondering which of the questions she'd asked he was going to answer, wondering if she should ask for a clarification on that point. But level playing fields had never been Harm's forte, and she wasn't sure if she wanted him to back out or not. She didn't know what the hell she wanted. She settled for nodding.

And of course, came the sardonic thought, she was going first. She took a fortifying breath, and straightened her spine for round one. At least the first question would cost her nothing.

"No." She stated.

It took a moment for her answer to register with him. When it did, he seemed to ... loosen right in front of her. In that one change, he was more recognizable than he'd been since she'd gone to his apartment about the Imes debacle. Hell, since the admiral had told him his resignation had been processed.

"No." He answered.

She frowned. She still didn't know what her questions were. This was hardly fair.

"My intention isn't to throw you into his arms." He elaborated as though he'd read her thoughts, and it let her shed some of her resentment.

Round two.

She looked him in the eye, even though she was absolutely terrified in this one pinpoint of time, even though her heart had constricted, anticipating another fissure, another break. She answered his question without letting herself think about what she was doing. "Yes."

He flashed his full-blown grin, and she wanted to hit him for it. But his grin was quick to disappear, replaced by an intense sincerity.

"What I want is you." His words and the look on his face were a punch in the gut. "You."

She had to put a hand out to steady herself, she had to lean back against her car because everything around her suddenly tilted. She felt like throwing up. She wanted to cry. She needed to sit down. She stared at him. She didn't know what to do.

"Now what." Had she said that out loud?

He shrugged, and looked away, breaking contact. "I don't know."

They stood shrouded in a deadening silence. She thought there was too much to fix. It wouldn't work.

"I'd like to be your friend again," He said, glancing at her from the corner of his eye.

"Me, too." She whispered, and felt like she'd just pushed herself right to the edge of a cliff.

He put his hand out. "We can work our way from there."

She eyed his proffered hand before grasping it in hers. The third time, she thought, this was the third time she was doing this with him. "We haven't been able to move beyond it before."

"We will this time. We both want the same thing." He shrugged, as though it was obvious, as simple as crossing the street at a green light. "That matters."

"We'll make it matter." She wondered if she was trying to convince herself.

He nodded.

This was either the weakest thing she'd done in a long while, or the strongest.

She loosened her hold on his hand, but instead of letting her go, he pulled her in for a hug.

"We'll be alright." His words were a whisper in her ear, his arms tightened around her. Pieces of her she'd once thought were immovable, and more recently convinced herself were lost, slowly slid back into place.

She nodded into his shoulder, her arms tentatively snaking around his waist. She would not cry. Strongest thing, she silently prayed instead, this would be the strongest thing she'd done in a long while.

--


End file.
